Nightshade Tea
by Empatheia
Summary: [Ursa] Being the history of a princess, the three lives she lived, and what she learned from each of them.


**A/N: **Written for the November round of the Avatar Flashfic comm on LiveJournal.

Hope you enjoy it!

**xxxxxx**

_**Nightshade Tea**_

**xxxxxx**

"Good evening, Princess Ursa," said the man standing on her doorstep.

She slammed the door in his face and pointedly locked it, then turned to press her back to the door and struggled for breath. "How do you know that name?" she snapped over her shoulder, silently drawing a long dagger from its hidden sheath at her hip. It didn't matter who this was-- if they'd come to cause her harm, she'd give as good as she got. She didn't plan to die until she got a chance to make things right with--

"Put that away, Ursa, I _gave_ you that," the man said with an audible smile in his voice.

Her heart did a great about-face in her chest. She dropped the dagger, whirled, and threw the door open. "Iroh!"

"Long time no see, my dear," he said, smiling gently and holding out his arms.

She threw herself into them, close to tears and smiling so widely with a face unaccustomed to it that it felt near to splitting. Then she grasped his arm and pulled him inside out of the chill evening breeze. "What news? How is Zuko? Azula? The war? And you, how are you?"

Iroh laughed and sat down heavily on one of her kitchen chairs. "One at a time, Ursa, I don't talk that fast at the best of times."

"Sorry," she said contritely, then remembered her royal manners and began the preparations for tea. Many things about Iroh had obviously changed, from his startlingly powerful physique to the wise light in his eyes, but she did not have to ask to be sure that he still loved tea with all his old fervour.

"I'll start with your second question— Zuko. As it took me some time to find you, I'm sure he's with the Avatar by now."

Ursa dropped the teacup she was washing. It shattered on the floor, unheard. "The Avatar?" she repeated.

"Yes," said Iroh, "I am not ashamed to admit I cried for joy when I heard the news. It took him a long time to make that decision, and for a while I thought he was going to stick with the wrong one, but he surprised me in the end. He does that a lot."

"Then the rumours were true," Ursa said, almost to herself. "The Avatar has returned."

"Oh, you had better believe it," said Iroh. "The boy is quite interesting, you would love him. Everyone else does, even Zuko, though it took him ages to realize it and he still refuses to call it that."

"I am simply glad he is out of the castle," said Ursa softly. "You know how badly I wanted to take him with me back then."

"I know," he said gently. "Thank you for listening to me and letting him stay. He would never have found this strength of conviction if he hadn't seen his father's heart from the inside out, first hand."

"It took everything I had to walk away without him," she said, almost as though she hadn't heard him. "I wanted to die."

"Well, I'm glad you didn't. Now how about that tea?"

Ursa nodded and knelt to gather the porcelain shards from the floor. "Tell me everything."

xxxxx

Sixteen years ago

xxxxx

She felt the strange liquid in the oath cup burn her tongue and throat on the way down.

It was done, now. There was no longer any way out, no matter how she prayed for one. The words of her mother circled repeatedly in her head-- _be loyal to your husband above all things, live for him as you have lived for yourself until now. Bear him children and raise them well. Obey what he asks, quickly and without question. Your life belongs to the Fire Nation and not to yourself._

Her new husband, this strange cold man kneeling beside her at the altar, had hardly said three words to her all day. He barely even looked at her, even though everyone said she looked lovely in her cream-and-red paneled dress and elaborate hair decorations.

"May the spirits bless and watch over your union," said the monk-priest who was presiding over the wedding.

Ursa believed in the spirits. As a small child she had seen them often, hiding in the trees and hills and sometimes stealing her milk off the doorstep. As she'd grown older and had royal etiquette beaten into her, however, they had faded from her sight until she nearly forgot them completely. However, she never came to believe that they had been only childish imaginings. They were real and they watched, for good or ill.

It would best if she did nothing to anger them.

She bowed to the four directions in unison with her husband, carefully graceful as she'd practiced for weeks.

All there was left now was the dinner, a sparing meal despite the feast laid out, as neither the dress nor manners would allow for indulgence. She danced with her husband under the red hanging lanterns, then with several other nobles to be polite. Among these was her husband's older brother, a genial man named Iroh who smiled at her and did not test her as the others had. She liked him. He was kind.

She danced with Ozai one more time, then the celebration petered out like a candle and the new royal couple were escorted to the bedchamber for the consummation.

What followed after she did her best to forget, for though he was not unkind, neither was he gentle. She would hurt for days to come.

At least she remembered not to cry.

xxxxx

Ursa quickly learned to wear a calm, gentle smile like armour, and keep her hands folded in her sleeves out of sight. The smile disarmed, the daggers in her sleeves protected, so though she never felt safe, she never felt helpless either.

When it became apparent that she carried a royal grandchild, she took to wandering the garden Ozai had built for her with her handmaidens and refusing visitors. The Fire Nation was undoubtedly glorious, but it was cruel, and so she ate no food and drank no tea that had not been tested by a servant first until long after Zuko was born.

In the shadows of the hallways she walked were always the deeper shadows of silent, invisible guards. She went nowhere unattended. Even as she slept she heard whispers outside the door.

Nevertheless, Ursa was a resilient woman, and eventually taught herself to be happy despite everything. She had been raised for this, after all, and now she had a son to give all the love she had expected to give to Ozai.

Learned happiness is no less true for being built of flowers and dresses, new-born skin and half-thought dreams.

xxxxx

General Iroh came home infrequently, but they were by far her favourite times of the year. He would come to visit her, trailed by half a dozen retainers so as to maintain propriety, and she would make him tea. They would sit in the garden for hours trading news and gossip of the frontlines and the palace, laughing and barefooted on a blanket in the grass, feeding the turtleducks scraps from their picnic lunch.

She tended his wounds if he had any. He listened to her grievances and offered her comfort.

Zuko clung to him like a small fuzzy-headed leech, instinctively adoring him as though he believed Iroh to be his father in Ozai's place. Ursa could not say he was wrong to believe this—certainly Iroh spent far more time with him than Ozai did, dandling the black-haired toddler on his knee and teaching him small things like somersaults and headstands that Zuko practiced with relish for days after Iroh left.

For Ursa he always brought a gift, usually from some unknown small-town craftswoman and always exquisitely lovely.

He was a friend to her, and she to him, if the royal family could be said to _have_ friends.

Only one thing did he ever ask of her, and she did not understand it until years later.

"Promise me this," he said, one sun-golden afternoon beside the pond.

She nodded for him to continue, unsettled by the strange gravity in his voice.

"If you ever get the opportunity to leave the palace, _take it_. But… _but_, please listen, Ursa, _leave Zuko here._"

She stared at him, protests dying before his earnest, worried face. She didn't know what he'd learned that so bothered him, but for him to ask such a promise from her, it had to be terrible.

"May I ask why?" she said faintly, reaching out to grasp his hand.

He closed both of his craggy hands around hers and looked her in the eyes. "I can't say why, but I have a feeling… call it warrior's instinct. It would be best if you could make people believe you are dead, if you can manage it. Not yet. But don't wait too long either."

"I don't understand," she whispered.

His hands tightened on hers, almost to the point of pain. "You don't have to, just promise me. For your own sake, and for Zuko's."

There were tears in her eyes, though she couldn't say why. It was like a premonition of something terrible she couldn't put a name to. She nodded. "I promise."

"Thank you," he said, breathing a great sigh of relief and raising her hand to his mouth to kiss it. "I feel much better."

And just like that, the solemn aura dissipated and the sunshine crept back into her bones, and she felt as though she had crawled out of a cave into the daylight after a week of darkness.

He left for Ba Sing Se again the next day.

Whenever he left for the battlefield, she spent days—sometimes weeks-- afterwards lighting incense and praying to the spirits for his safety and wellbeing. If he were ever to die, her fragile gossamer happiness would be shredded and take years to rebuild.

For his safe return to the garden and her side, she prayed until her back would hardly unbend from bowing.

xxxxx

Zuko peered over the edge of the bassinet and made a face. Though not quite literate enough to tell his mother what he thought of this newcomer, his facial expression communicated his opinion clearly enough.

Ursa laughed and picked Azula up. "This is your little sister, Zuko," she said. "As her older brother, you have to take especial care of her and teach her how to be good since your father doesn't have the time."

Zuko nodded solemnly, though she was sure he'd only understood a fraction of what she'd said. He was a kind, obedient child, though unfortunately clumsy and somewhat slower to learn than the other children. If not for Iroh's sporadic lessons he might have fallen behind, for anything Iroh said seemed to stick in his brain as though branded there.

"A-zu-la," Zuko said slowly, making sure to get the syllables right. Though not quick, he was thorough, and remembered things by repetition if he could not remember them otherwise.

"That's right, Zuko, well done."

Zuko beamed up at her, and Ursa felt herself dissolve into love for this little smiling being that had somehow come forth from herself. He, Azula, and the garden she spent all her time in were the only things Ozai had ever done for her that she was truly thankful for, but they were enough.

As she had taught herself happiness, she could teach herself love, and so she did. She built a love for her husband on the crinkling eyes of her laughing son, and the tranquil peace of her garden, and the wordless gifts he sometimes sent her when he remembered to think of her past his political ambitions.

It was enough for her, because she had also taught herself not to wish for things she could not have.

xxxxx

By the time Azula was five, it was clear that she was lacking in the same vital traits as her father was. It delighted her to be cruel to small things and to make people do things they did not wish to do, and she was an accomplished thief. Whatever she wanted, she set out to get, and if she did not get it, she tried different tacks until she did. She never threw tantrums, content instead to sit silently in her room pondering revenge.

Ursa fought to love her, but it was difficult when Azula did not seem to care for her in the slightest or accept any of her affections. Even so young, she already thirsted for power like her father.

Worse, it was not out of her reach.

Zuko began learning firebending at seven years old, and progressed slowly but steadily.

Azula watched him as often as she could, sitting with uncharacteristic quiet as he practiced ceaselessly. Her fingers moved unconsciously in jerky patterns as though mirroring his forms.

Soon after, she set one of Ursa's handmaidens on fire after the girl refused to let her into Ursa's chambers while she was out.

That night, Ursa prayed until the fey hours of the morning, trying to banish the sound of her handmaiden's agonized shrieks and the victorious glint in Azula's eyes as she stood over her from her mind. There was nothing human or warm about her daughter's reaction to the pain she had caused, and there was a deep tremor of fear in Ursa because of it that no amount of praying could banish.

xxxxx

The years marched by in military order outside, but within the palace walls they more drifted than anything. Only in the gardens could the seasons be told, and no storm ever reached the inner sanctums.

Azula grew into a sharp-edged, calculating girl of nine, with the knowledge and means to make her malice bite much deeper than ever before.

Zuko, at eleven, remained a gentle soul, easily entertained and innocently gullible to Azula's deceptions.

Neither of them had friends.

Azula had what looked like friends… but they were not, nor anything close to it. They were sidekicks at best, minions at worst, though they liked her well enough. They would do close to anything on her order, up to and including things that would get them whipped, but she never condescended to break a nail for them.

Zuko had no friends because Azula had threatened every boy near his age in the palace with a painful fiery death if they even thought about being nice to him. Everyone knew she had the power to pull it off and reluctantly obeyed.

She was, simply put, a firebending prodigy the likes of which had not been seen since Ursa's grandfather, Roku. It was as though the fire spoke to her—she could make it purr under her fingers like a savage beast loyal only to her. It danced for her, and she danced within it without ever so much as singing a hair on her head.

Zuko, on the other hand, had to practice exhaustively what came so naturally to his sister. She quickly passed him and left him to toil clumsily after her, forcing his awkward body towards the grace she was born with.

Ursa patiently salved Zuko's innumerable wounds and burns, not all of which she suspected were self-inflicted. She could never find proof of Azula's small treacheries, and Zuko clammed up whenever asked, but her mother's instinct told her that her daughter had a lot to do with why her son always looked like a battlefield and rarely smiled anymore.

One afternoon, he sat on her lap in the garden as she spread healing balm on yet another burn, this one on his back and not small. It was in a place that was almost certainly impossible for him to have done to himself.

"Zuko," she murmured, massaging the balm deeper into the wound while he held stoically still, "let me tell you a secret."

She had long since resigned herself to the fact that Azula had him so terrified he would never tell anyone what she did to him, but this at least she could do for him.

"Your sister… she lies like she breathes. Even if she tells the truth, she has a reason for it, and it is never what you think. Do not trust her, not what she says nor what she does, not even if she seems to have proof of her honesty."

"I know," he said after a small, cowed silence. "Azula always lies. But even if she lies, she's smarter and faster and stronger and somehow I end up doing whatever she wants anyways."

Ursa's throat seized up so she could hardly speak. "Someday," she promised, "I will take you out of here and show you where I grew up. You'll like it there—there are lots of boys your age, and trees and hills to climb, and Azula won't come with us."

She'd struggled for years not to favour one child over the other, but when Ozai made it clear that Azula was his favourite and Zuko barely worth his notice (_That girl was born lucky. He was lucky to be born_), she had given up, and did not regret it.

"That sounds nice," Zuko said, hope and wistful longing prominent in his voice.

"I promise you," she said thickly. "I'll make it happen."

xxxxx

It was scarcely a month later when the letter came from the frontlines at Ba Sing Se.

Iroh's son Lu Ten was dead. Iroh himself had gone half-mad in his grief and abandoned the battle.

When Ozai immediately requested an audience with Fire Lord Azulon, Ursa was not surprised at all.

He had never spoken to her directly about his ambitions, but she had picked up bits and pieces over the years until she had a fairly good idea what he was after and how he planned to get it.

Iroh had just played right into his hands. Ursa wished she could have gone back in time and warned him, but that was a fruitless wishing and so she abandoned it. Azulon favoured his older son, but his younger clearly had the upper hand in this situation. If he would not consent to making Ozai his heir, Ozai would make himself the heir, no matter what evils he had to commit to make it so.

Retreating to her chambers, she wrote a letter she prayed would make it to Iroh in time.

_Dearest Iroh,_

_I dare not say much in a letter that may be intercepted, but please, if you value your life, don__'__t come home. I will send again when I know it is safe._

_All my love,_

_Ursa_

Rolling it up into a neat scroll and tying it with a burgundy ribbon to make it look innocuous, she wandered down the hallways towards the dovecote, her armoured smile securely anchored on her face.

Until, that is, she passed the Zuko's room and heard the tail-end of a conversation that made her blood run cold. Tucking the message into her robe, she stormed into the room and seized Azula, dragging her out with a meaningful glance back at the tearful Zuko.

_Azula always lies_, she said with her eyes.

"Azula always lies," she heard him repeat behind her.

She took her daughter to the closest empty room she could find and closed the door behind them. Azula smirked up at her, clearly aware of why she was here and what her mother wanted of her.

"Talk," said Ursa, not even bothering to keep the chill out of her voice.

"Very well," said Azula, that infernal smirk never wavering. "It's not as if you can do anything about it anyways. Father asked Grandfather to make him his heir since Uncle Iroh is crazy now. That much I'm sure you know. But then, Grandfather got angry, and…" She trailed off, a light of pure twisted delight flooding her face.

"And _what?_" Ursa snapped, barely keeping a hold on her temper.

Azula met her eyes, and all Ursa could see in them was malice and triumph. "Grandfather said that Father should learn humility by suffering as his brother has."

Without sparing another word for her monstrous daughter, Ursa turned and fled the chamber and the sound of Azula's pealing laughter behind her. Terror was so huge in her that she could hardly breath around it, but she pushed herself to make it to the dovecote and find a messenger hawk that knew the way to Ba Sing Se.

The letter for Iroh safely sent, she slumped down against the wall and let bitter tears well in her eyes.

All this time she had struggled to protect her precious son from the political ambitions of others, and in the end the worst threat came from the least expected direction. Azulon was a strong and clever Firelord, and not without temperance, but he was old and loved his firstborn son too much to think clearly, it seemed.

Ursa fingered the daggers in her sleeves and remembered a promise she had made long ago, once upon a sunny springtime garden.

xxxxx

She felt empty, hollowed-out like an old gourd.

The steps between Ozai's chambers and Azulon's passed as if in a dream… she could hear nothing but the steady thunder of her own heart.

The guard announced her and the great doors swung ponderously open. Still nothing but calm surety and resignation to the necessity of the path she walked.

"I've brought you your evening tea, Firelord," she said formally. She did this often, and it would not be seen as strange ifshe did it today. It would look like penitence for the impertinence of her husband earlier.

"Come in."

She carried the tray in her hands across the room to where the old Firelord lay scowling on his daybed and set it down on a table near him. His eyes flicked up to meet hers, and a great anger burned there.

"Have you come to apologize?"

Though it felt like the hardest thing she had ever done to say "Yes," and bow to the ground in an appearance of contrition, she knew she would do a harder thing yet tonight. "He spoke out of line. I should have tried to check his ambitions as soon as I learned of them, but could not bring myself to believe he would denounce his brother. Forgive me."

A sigh from the bed above her. "Do not worry yourself over it, my dear. I know my son well enough to know that his ambition is not something a woman can restrain, even one such as yourself."

No mention of what he planned to make Ozai do, nothing of the cruel punishment he had handed out to a blameless child. Anger bloomed into a strangling rage in her chest, but she swallowed it and smiled up as though she knew nothing.

"Thank you, Firelord. It eases my heart to have your pardon. I will excuse myself—please enjoy your tea. It is your favourite, and I put a little extra honey in it behind your handmaiden's back."

Azulon chuckled and waved his hand. "All right, go on then."

Gathering herself up, Ursa backed out of the chamber and turned to walk calmly down the halls to her own room to wait for true nightfall and the cover of darkness. She had put another herb, a secret of her family, into the tea along with the nightshade root, and it would take some time for him to die. Until then he would have horrific visions, and knowing what had been most recently on his mind before drinking it, they would be about his son and grandson and what he had been about to do to them.

Just punishment, she thought.

When nightfall finally came not long later, she put on a cloak and hid a small bag beneath it, then went to Zuko's room.

He was already asleep, his dark hair and small pale face peaceful against the white pillow. There was a worry line between his brows. Ursa feared he would have many more before she met him again.

She touched his shoulder gently to wake him.

He blurred slowly back into semi-consciousness and looked up at her with golden eyes. "Mother?"

"Zuko, please, my love, listen to me," she whispered, conscious of time running short. "Everything I've done, I've done to protect you. Remember this, Zuko: no matter how things may seem to change, _never forget who you are._" She prayed the intensity of desperation in her voice would make him remember the words, or at least their meaning if nothing else.

He stared at her, unable to formulate a response in his half-conscious state.

Swiftly she leaned down and kissed his brow, then turned and forced herself to walk away, one step at a time. One glance back only she allowed herself before casting the hood of her cloak over her face and sweeping out into the darkness of the hallways for the last time.

The image of his bleary, frightened face she burned into her memory. Someday, she vowed to herself, she would come back for him. Someday she would save him from the luxuriously appointed hell she was leaving him in... but right now, Iroh was right. If she took him with her, they would never cease to be hunted. The Firelord's firstborn son and heir? Ozai would fear betrayal and rebellion at every turn and would never rest until he found her.

This way, he would live a hard life under his father's rule, but he would be somewhat safer. In exchange for keeping Ozai's hands clean of his father's blood, she had extracted a promise from him to keep Zuko safe, from Azula no less than from the other scheming nobles. Ozai's 'safe' would likely not look much like a normal person's idea of it, but Zuko would live, and he would eventually come to understand the truth of the world he lived in.

Iroh would make sure of that, one way or another.

The bells began to toll for the Firelord's death just as the city gates closed behind her and the mountain-dark swallowed her. She had done what she could. The rest was up to Zuko.

xxxxx

Ursa stood overlooking the small town spread out beneath her on the valley floor.

It was far from the capital, but not so far that people would expect her to flee here. There was an abandoned house on the outskirts that had once belonged to a soldier who had lost his life on the front-lines. She would live there, hidden from the gaze of the palace eyes, until the time came to move again.

Sliding a dagger from her sleeve, she gathered her long, royally smooth hair in her other hand and slashed cleanly through it. The remainder blew about her shoulders, unaccustomed to this newfound freedom. The long tail in her hand she released to the wind.

This way, ragged-haired and without the cosmetics the palace handmaidens had always drowned her in, she would not be recognized until she wished to be.

Her new life had begun. All that was left to do was quietly live it… and pray.

xxxxx

Tears streamed down her face and dripped unheeded off the end of her chin to splash shimmering on her clenched hands in her lap.

Much of what Iroh told her she had known—Zuko's scar, his banishment, his futile quest to find a ghost.

There were other things he told her, however, that she had not, and it was those which made her weep. She had asked him to tell her everything, and he had told her everything: every small moment, every step along Zuko's path to understanding. More than anything, it was the quiet pride that glowed deep within Iroh's eyes as he spoke that made her tears well up uncontrollably.

From the outside, banishment seemed a punishment, but Ursa realized that it was the best possible thing that could have happened to him.

He was out of the palace, and with Iroh—two of the things she'd wished hardest for in all these five years.

"Zuko thinks you are dead," he told her, and was visibly surprised when she smiled.

"I know," she said. "I asked Ozai to tell him and Azula that. I didn't want him coming to look for me, and I certainly didn't want Azula showing up on my doorstep. I don't even know how you knew I wasn't."

Now it was Iroh's turn to smile. "I am a very difficult person to lie to," he said. "Ozai told me you had died at the hands of the palace guards while fleeing the city, but it had no ring of truth to it. I gathered information until I had enough pieces of the puzzle to put together a picture of what really happened the night my father died, and from there it was easy to figure out the rest."

Ursa was silent for a moment, staring at her hands. "I am sorry," she said at last. "I killed your father."

Iroh rose from his chair and knelt in front of hers, catching her hands in his as he had once a very long time ago. "You don't need my forgiveness," he said gravely. "My father was mad. He threatened the life of your son. You did what any mother would do, and I hold you blameless for it."

Ursa keened and burst into renewed tears, throwing her arms around Iroh's neck and falling off her chair into him. He caught her easily and held her until the racking sobs subsided.

"Hush, hush," he said gently, then to her immense shock, smiled. "You killed him with _tea_," he said, voice full of suppressed mirth. "I personally can't think of a better way to go than that."

"It's not funny!" she wailed in protest, smacking his shoulder, but he only stood up and pulled her to her feet as well.

"Death is both tragic and hilarious," he said. "Make sure to laugh after you cry."

She couldn't seem to break his gaze or let go of his hands, and neither could she speak.

"Now for the real reason I came here today," he said formally, tightening his hands. "Princess Ursa, are you ready for the world to see you again? I know a young man who would love to meet you."

Spirits, could she do nothing but cry today? She nodded, and let the smile in her chest blossom forth onto her face.

"Good," he said. "We'll leave tomorrow morning, then. May I borrow your floor?"

Smiling so hard now she thought her face might split, she shook her head. "No, you may not. You may, however, borrow the left side of the bed."

"By your leave, my lady," said Iroh, and bowed low, "I'll do that."

xxxxx

It was unfair that one woman should live three lives, but that was the fate given Princess Ursa of the Fire Nation.

The next day, she began a new life yet again—her third, and most beautiful yet.

**XxxxxxxxX**

**A/N: **Have I mentioned that I love writing backstory? Because I do. I really, really do.

Hope you enjoyed it!

Eia


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